Driver Update and Management for Windows Devices

How to Fix a Frozen Taskbar on Windows OS

Frozen taskbar is an unresponsive state of the taskbar. You may have a frozen taskbar or unresponsive taskbar after a Windows change, such as the Windows 10 downgrade or upgrade, Windows 10 anniversary update, etc. In this case, you fail to click on anything on the Windows taskbar, including the right clicking.

Well, the icons or the Start menu are dead and not clickable on such a frozen taskbar. How depressed! Since there are many users encountering the frozen taskbar issue on Windows 10, 8.1, 7, etc., today I will talk about how to fix a Windows frozen taskbar.

How to Fix the Windows Frozen Taskbar

Generally speaking, there are several factors that can result in taskbar not working, such as a wrong running of the Windows Explorer, the Frequent items on the Jump List, disabled services, etc. Here are 5 solutions for you to fix an unresponsive taskbar.

Wait until the repair is finished, and then you will find the frozen taskbar has been unfreezed.

Note: You should enable the Windows Firewall before the steps above. Go to Services tab on Task Manager to check if the service MpsSvc, whose description is Windows Firewall, is running.

Method 3: Enable the User Manager

Sometimes, the disabled User Manager will also result in a Windows frozen taskbar. So re-enable the User Manager to unfreeze the unresponsive or frozen taskbar.

Use Windows shortcut keys Win + R to launch Run.

Type services.msc into the box and press Enter.

Double-click on the User Manager and select Automatic from Startup type.

Click OK and then restart the PC.

Method 4: Disable Recently Opened Items

This method is for the right-click on the Start menu or the taskbar issue. If you fail to get the Jump List or the Context menu with a right click on the frozen taskbar, you may consider turning off the recently opened items and speeding up the list launch.

Use Windows shortcut keys Win + I to open Settings.

Select Personalization and then select Start tab from the left column.

Disable the Show recently opened items in Jump Lists on Star or the taskbar.

Once finishing the settings, you’ve created a new user account named Admin123, whose password is Mypassword. Switch to the new user account with a replication of your data. After that you may find the Windows frozen taskbar issue has been solved.

31 thoughts on “How to Fix a Frozen Taskbar on Windows OS”

thanks a bunch! I am so happy I found this! I have always thought I was at a dead end every time this happened and would always resort to pressing and holding the power button which can’t be to healthy for my lappy lol. I has the hp probook 650

For me the Restart button in the Task Manager behaved as if it was disabled, although it looked enabled. Clicking it had no effect. However I was able to right click on the process and select Restart from the drop down, which did work.

Thank you so much, been driving me round the bend since the anniversary update. Hopefully there’ll be a fix sent out. (Sound of hollow laughter). Anyway, thanks again, the initial Task Manager solution worked for me.

Hey guys today i had this problem and couldn’t find the answer. The problem i had was that taskbar was frozen and windows+r wasnt working.
It was caused because in my last session some process was using to much disk so i suspended it.
So the next time i turned on the computer my taskbar was frozen, but using the task manager and resource monitor i managed to locate the process i had suspended, and as soon as i resumed it everything worked fine, hope this helps someone.

I did all this and it didn’t help me out one bit. Toolbar is still locked only clicking “File Explorer icon” works (Takes forever to open tho) I can not search, run, see my tray items, nothing works. I can reset the PC and everything works, but after a little bit it all gets frozen again. It’s a new install of windows 10 on a new PC. After latest update stupid bar frozen all the time

P.S You left out to run powershell as an admin you can run powershell then type ” Start-Process powershell -Verb runAs ” or check the option box to Create this task with administrative privileges”